I was connected to the internet today and so allowed Update Manager to run and apply the updates. There were several (maybe 10 or 12?). I did not write down what they were because after countless times of this app working perfectly, I had stopped doing so.

Everything seemed fine - at first. But then I went to my Videos folder and noticed that an .avi video file did not get a thumbnail created for it but instead just shows the generic film-reel thumbnail. I deleted my .thumbnails folder in hopes that it was just a glitch and that this would fix it. Not only did it not but I (of course) lost all of the thumbnails that the system had already created. I double-clicked on the video file and instead of the system running movie player I just got the busy globe for several seconds and then it was as if I hadn't double-clicked. I tried again with a known good video file - same result.

I also can no longer hover my mouse cursor over audio files and have the system automatically play them.

For both audio and video files, right-clicking on the file and telling the system to open the file with VLC works as normal - so I assume that it isn't a system-wide problem but, rather, something to do with Movie Player. (I don't recall a movie player update listed but this is not a sure thing as I only glanced at the list.)

Has anyone else had this problem today or within the last week or so (I was several days behind on updates)? Has a solution already been figured out? Is there an easy to "roll back the past week's worth of updates" so that I might try each one on at a time to find out which one caused my issue and then just refuse to allow it in the future?

Thank you. I've tried very hard not to screw up my system so that I did not have to bother everyone again. I was doing well for quite a while, but didn't think to worry about system updates. My apologies, lol.

Scared me a sec, I also fully updated today but had NOT tested mplayer since the update. Just tested and it still works flawless. Everything still works flawless. So my guess would be a bad update some how, that is incredibly rare with linux. Sooooooooo, now how to fix lol. Not encountered this one yet on any of some 321 systems. My guess would be to remove mplayer and fresh install. Fresh install of codec packs etc. Same with restricted extras.

Edit: your Ultimate Edition 2.4 and I am Ultimate Edition 2.9 so not the same ball game lol.

Sorry I do not have a old enough system around to run Ultimate Edition 2.4 not even in vbox.

Gúrú Linux ríomhaire wrote:My guess would be to remove mplayer and fresh install. Fresh install of codec packs etc. Same with restricted extras.

Screenshot-9.png

Oh man, I was afraid someone was going to say that. The basic installation was easy (it was included in the system, I think). But the codecs and "related" that I needed to figure out in order to play every audio/video file - and to have the system both auto-generate video file thumbnails and to allow audio file "previewing" when I hovered my mouse cursor over one of them...

Well, I couldn't actually figure that out. It took some of the good members/staff of this site to figure that out. And I told myself I'd remember the procedure if I ever had to repeat it so as not to needlessly pester them again. But after a year plus with no problems... I've forgotten how.

Here is a log from Synaptic of the updates that were applied to my system. Only update run this month - could, of course, be wrong, but I've installed no other apps in the time since things were working properly so don't have an alternate guess - so I am guessing that it was caused by one of them. Although I didn't lose power during the update and UM appeared to run correctly (I received no error notifications):

Commit Log for Thu Mar 3 14:52:00 2011

Upgraded the following packages:frei0r-plugins (1.1.22git20090409+repack-0ubuntu1) to 1.2.1+git20110301.c4cdf15c-0ubuntu0~sunab~karmic1fuse-utils (2.7.4-1.1ubuntu4.4) to 2.7.4-1.1ubuntu4.5icedtea-6-jre-cacao (6b20-1.9.5-0ubuntu1~9.10.1) to 6b20-1.9.7-0ubuntu1~9.10.1libfuse2 (2.7.4-1.1ubuntu4.4) to 2.7.4-1.1ubuntu4.5libsmbclient (2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.7) to 2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.8libwbclient0 (2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.7) to 2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.8openjdk-6-jre (6b20-1.9.5-0ubuntu1~9.10.1) to 6b20-1.9.7-0ubuntu1~9.10.1openjdk-6-jre-headless (6b20-1.9.5-0ubuntu1~9.10.1) to 6b20-1.9.7-0ubuntu1~9.10.1openjdk-6-jre-lib (6b20-1.9.5-0ubuntu1~9.10.1) to 6b20-1.9.7-0ubuntu1~9.10.1samba-common (2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.7) to 2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.8samba-common-bin (2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.7) to 2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.8smbclient (2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.7) to 2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.8sun-java6-bin (6.22-0ubuntu1~9.10.1) to 6.24-1build0.9.10.1sun-java6-jre (6.22-0ubuntu1~9.10.1) to 6.24-1build0.9.10.1winbind (2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.7) to 2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5.8

Installed the following packages:libopencv0 (2.1.0-1ppa1)

EDIT: On the off chance, I am going to reboot the system and see if there is any change. If I don't report back within 2 minutes, there was none.

I rebooted to no change. But then I thought about that list of updates. The first one was "plugins." I copied the name from the log and pasted it into the search-box in Synaptic. That took me to the file and its description - which mentioned video although it didn't mention Movie Player.

Thankfully, Synaptic's log (history) includes the previous version. I copied THAT and went a Googlin'. Ended up on a Launchpad page, saw that there was a convenient .deb, downloaded it, double-clicked on it, got spanked for not noticing that I downloaded the Sparc-architecture for the file, lol, went back and downloaded the i386 version, removed the new version (via Synaptic), closed it, and double-clicked on the previous version's .deb in my Downloads directory.

After being strongly warned that there is a newer version in the repo that is usually better supported and works better (something humorous like that), it installed it.

Double-clicking on a video file once again plays it in Movie Player!(After a quick re-deletion of .thumbnails) the system once again auto-creates thumbnails for all my video files!Hovering my mouse cursor over an audio file once again causes the system to start playing ("previewing?") it!

So... After calming down and thinking, I managed to make things work correctly again. All by myself.

I am sorry to bother everyone. But since I have, I'll go ahead and state that I do not know why this problem occurred. Gúrú Linux ríomhaire checked his system and it did not have this problem with (I assume) the newer update installed.

I am satisfied that things are back to normal and will try to remember to disallow this update whenever it shows up in Update Manager. But I am curious as to what happened and why.

Thanks again to TheeMahn for giving us Ultimate Edition and to you and all the members and staff for the help you do. And thanks, as well, to whoever wrote GDebi Package Installer in such a way that it wouldn't let me incorrectly install the Sparc architecture version of a file.